hedda62: my cat asleep (Default)
Soon, the serious post about the novels and publishing decisions and so forth. For now, the writing brain is still buzzing with "oh, Mr. Finch" and "oh, Sergeant Hathaway" and "oh, Aral I-mean-Viceroy-Count-Admiral" (none of which, by the way, sound like "oh, Mr. Darcy," at least in the sense of swooniness. They are all rather exasperated and empathetic and amused and okay, the Aral one is a little swoony, but not in a wet-poet-shirt sort of way. Yes?). Which, okay, means there will be more fic, though I can't promise anything except the Lewis one since I am contracted to do that (and have made a pretty good start), but I can't talk about that one because it is Secret.

Other things I may write in the future:

The most probable is the one that [livejournal.com profile] penwiper26 gave me the impetus for by asking quite a while ago for the first private conversation between Aral and Ekaterin, and then added a bunny recently about Aral and Tej, and I thought, well, let's extend that to Laisa and Kareen while we're at it, and throw in Alys for good measure. So, what I will hope to write is Five Conversations Aral Had With Daughters-In-Law and Um-Daughters-In-Law and Alys-Who-Is-Decidedly-Not-A-Daughter-In-Law-But. And I mention it here because I had thought, give it to L. for her birthday! but here it is past mid-November and no. That will not happen. Hopefully it will happen before her next birthday.

Also, these:

The one where Harold Finch is the Fisher King (kingfisher, geddit?) and no, I have no clue how but it's a cool idea, yes?

The sequel to "Sparrow" where Harold and Simon have a Serious Talk about machines and bodies and spying and stuff. I would have to make up some sort of plot for this, at least as backstory. But still, this is more likely than the others to actually happen.

The Lewis/Sherlock crossover where Sherlock comes to Oxford during his hiatus and falls into the middle of an investigation in which Philip Horton reappears as the star witness, and there is interesting stuff about Asperger's and some sort of tug-of-war over Philip between Sherlock and Hathaway. This would, clearly, also involve plot. And research.

Or, quite possibly, none of the above.

In other news, I meant to wait for Christmas to reread Dialogues of the Dead and Death's Jest-Book but I failed to do so (I must, however, remember to post my very strange list of Christmas books at the appropriate time). Oh, Reginald Hill. RIP and I still adore you. Ah, and if we are proposing strange-but-not-impossible crossovers:

The one where Franny Roote meets Root, and sociopathic underhanded mayhem ensues. Bad code, indeed. (But seriously, no one but me would read that. Unless I can convince some of you to read Reginald Hill. And watch PoI. C'mon... *holds out candy*)
hedda62: my cat asleep (Default)
Time to make this craziness face the world! Or that tiny portion of the world that cares.

No Time for Sergeants

Summary: Janice Longbright, Edgar Wield and James Hathaway walk into a bar. Written purely for my own satisfaction (though I'd be glad to know if anyone else gets all the jokes). Mild spoilers but nothing to keep you from reading the books/watching the show. Takes place sometime in 2011 and I don't care if the dates line up.

Crossover-and-how. (I haven't even counted the references to different universes.) I'd forgotten how hard they are to write - you're either confusing the unknowing or annoying the fans. But it grabbed me and I had to write it. (I bet you say that to all the stories.)

Yes, I did get Bothari in there! And the Dashing White Sergeant, sort of.
hedda62: my cat asleep (Default)
A rather shitty weekend-plus of rhinovirus, migraine, and oh-oops-not-menopause-completely-yet have at least given me more reading time, so I can now say I've read every word of the Dalziel-Pascoe series. Alas, sort of. I mean, it's been fun, but this is it, and unlike with living authors, or authors who were at least living when I finished their books, I can't expect more (although that's not all he wrote, so I could read the stand-alones and the other short series too).

There's also the oddity of having read it so out of order - yeah, I did enter the Vorkosigan saga with Komarr and the Aubrey-Maturin books with The Letter of Marque, but then corrected my error quickly and started at the beginning. This time, not so much, and I'll need to wait a while before going through it all again in the right sequence. I ended up with Child's Play, which is probably best known to fans as "the one where Wield comes out," provoking the totally unflappable Dalziel to the response in the subject line (and "I'd have been worried else that I'd not mentioned it to you." Pascoe, the (relatively) sensitive liberal, is of course flabbergasted at the revelation). Other stuff happens too, naturally: murder and such.

So, overall, much worth the time invested: some of them are just pretty good, some are damned clever, some give me that feeling I recall from first venturing into O'Brian that I'm being ravished by someone with complete control over the language and a talent for distraction from any inadequacies that exist.

I'm also feeling a trifle Yorkshire-dominated, between Hill's books, "Downton Abbey," and the kid starting rehearsals (as assistant director) for "The Secret Garden" (the musical). Maybe a revisit to "All Creatures Great and Small" would be appropriate.

All caught up to US broadcast on "Downton," by the way, so 2.06 or "The war is over, hurrah, now we can devote ourselves fully to soap opera." I think any show where I greet the credits with crack-filled (yet entirely likely) predictions for the next episode has outlived its creative drama potential, but I'm still having fun with it, and we'll see how far they can push the melodrama; please do not spoil me.

And, oh shit, I have a lot of work to catch up on. Let's start with more caffeine.
hedda62: my cat asleep (Default)
Reginald Hill dies at 75 (January 13)

Took me several years to kill off Patrick O'Brian, after all...

(That was a joke, if you're worried, but I don't feel like making smiley faces.)

Anyway, I've now read the solid lot from Bones and Silence onwards, plus An Advancement of Learning, and I have a couple more early ones on library hold. There are non-D&P books to read, too, if I feel like it.

My husband, "Portlandia" on his mind, says I should look up "R. Hill" in the local phone book and ask him to write another book for me. (You would have to have seen the "Battlestar Galactica" bit. SO TRUE.)
hedda62: my cat asleep (Default)
First, two quotations from author's introductions, cut for length:

Patrick O'Brian )

Reginald Hill )

These are actually examples of different phenomena; O'Brian's characters are living multiple fictional years within the historic year of 1812, whereas Hill's are stretching out 10 years of fictional life over 20 that the author and his readers are experiencing. But my subject line actually referred to the quirk of the author explaining himself. Does anyone have any additional examples of this - not of fiction stretching or compressing time, since that happens to most series characters, but of authors stepping forward to talk about it?

I wrote a little story a few years ago taking advantage of O'Brian's time-fiddling. Fictional time is just a very cool thing and I don't think we notice it enough (although perhaps to do so twists the muscles of our minds in painful directions; everything in moderation).
hedda62: my cat asleep (Default)
This could be quite a long essay if I wanted to spend time writing it instead of, you know, reading books (or writing editing them, or figuring out my seed orders), but here's what you get instead.

I still <3 Reginald Hill. I am reading the Dalziel/Pascoe series all out of order, which is not my usual preference, but needs must; this peregrination is of footpaths over the fells, or rather through libraries and their loan services and the shipping speeds of used book stores. Right now I'm in the middle of On Beulah Height, which is entirely gripping despite my knowing how it comes out because I've read all the books after it. And a few before.

Anyway, one effect of delving sideways into a series like this is that it gets me thinking about the writing of series fiction. Which I have to; having written four books in one big arc with at least a fifth to come does not make me an expert at this, since for one thing I haven't faced a broad reading public, but it does make me someone with a personal interest in techniques. With series fiction, you hope people will pick them up in the right order, but you always know you'll face readers like me who start in the middle, and so each book has to be comprehensible on its own. continued thoughts )

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